


The Pretender

by ellethom



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, F/M, Gift Fic, I Don't Even Know, JBO Secret Santa, got really angsty on me, soulmate mark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 20:06:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13131168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellethom/pseuds/ellethom
Summary: This is for the ever lovely and quite amazing Julieoftarth (wheretheressmoak).  I got her as a secret Santa for the 2017 JBO exchange.  Her words were Loyalty, soulmates, home.  Hope this fits the bill!





	The Pretender

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Julieoftarth (Wherethereissmoak)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wherethereissmoak/gifts).



His sister had thought he was out of his mind to go along with it. She had even suggested they run off to Essos and become wandering lovers. They were already lovers, the wandering part was far less likely to come to fruition. Cersei loved her avarice, and the first time she would have had to take a job where her manicured nails would be in peril would send her running back to Casterly faster than a hungry lioness after a wounded antelope. 

No, he needed to do this, there was no other way around it The whole soulmate thing left little doubt that this was the path his life must follow. Father had been relentless, as always. Claiming a thirty five year old man who has no other viable prospects for marriage, should take the fates word for what was good for him. 

The woman was ugly though. Hardly even a woman, she was younger than him by nearly ten years and looked more young man than young woman. But, there was no doubt that it had surely become time to settle down and be the man his father needed to him to be. 

Jaime Lannister decided he would fake it until he could make it. 

The wedding, or so it could be called, was an opulent farce. The girl (Brienne was her name) had allowed his aunt to take charge, leaving everything in her capable yet heavy-handed care, meant the celebration was one of the largest the family had seen in aged. 

So he did it. He married her. 

They had barely exchanged a string of words longer than an order at Starbucks, and by the time the newly wedded couple had been ushered into the Town Car, that count hadn’t crested any higher. 

She looked like a stork in her gown, tall and bulky on top with long legs sticking out from the mountains of white silk. She sat on the far side of him as the car careened through the placid Westerlands landscape. “Don’t look so maudlin, the worst part is over.” he told her, offering a smile.

Her scowl turned to a deeper frown as she spoke. “Says you.” 

Jaime shrugged. He managed to preen under her fetid scrutiny. “Any woman in this country, hell this planet would be happy to have grabbed such a prize.”

She had snorted. Actually snorted and gave him a look he had been certain was the same she would give a piece of toilet paper stuck under her shoe. “I am a prize.” he said in a tone to equal her disdain. 

“A prize,” she said with a shake of her head. “Most women can look past all the crap in your past and fall at your feet.”

“And, lucky you.” he sneered. “Your mark matches mine.” He turned verdant eyes to her mystic blue. “What does that say about you, Mrs. Lannister.”

He tried not to be offended at the cringe the moniker induced from the woman. Instead, he gave her a feral grin. The soulmate mark had been unmistakable. When Tywin had found Brienne Tarth’s mark on a photo she’d shared on her InstaBran. 

She was just prey after that. After father realized what she was to his son and that meant a furthering of the old man’s greatest agenda: Legacy.

He’d been incensed at her words. She was barely a child, looking at him with distaste. The rest of the ride was silent. 

“Well, wench. Thanks to my father and your family’s inability to stay afloat, it looks as if we are stuck with each other, at least for the time being. Jaime idly scratched at the mark on his wrist; the very same soulmate mark that his new bride sported on her own left hand. “You think I wanted to marry either?” he said.

She was staring out the window when she spoke then, but Jaime could swear he could very nearly taste the repulsion in her words. “No, I would imagine you would not.”

There it was. That nasty not-rumor that had followed he and Cersei since high school. Idiots. Their relationship had started long before that. 

Her scowl had grown into a six month frown. Their honeymoon was a most silent affair, even the waitstaff of their exclusive resort and the Dornish sun could not melt the ice between them. 

It wasn't hard to imagine, logistically. The woman’s family was broke; their tiny island amounting to little more than an ancient wharf and an ancestral castle, both on their proverbial last legs. Jaime had visited the island when they had sat down, family to family, to agree upon terms. The island had assuredly seen better days. She was as much a prisoner in this as himself, and this alone began to change in him the ire toward their situation. 

Their return ‘home’ after the honeymoon was less than celebratory. Brienne had been horrified to find the movers had put all of her things into the master bedroom. Jaime laughed until he doubled over, that she would be so affronted. “I’m the one who would have to see your face every morning, Wench.” 

She had then recused herself to what should have been the guest room and slammed the door. After hearing what he was certain was crying, Jaime had spent the better part of an hour moving her things to the front of her very closed door.

\---------------------

Now, six months in and little had changed from that silent honeymoon. Jaime often wonders if the mark was even correct, but he had seen it enough times on her wrist, same as his, the black sword with golden lion hilt. Small, but noticeable enough at the weekly Sunday dinners where they are obligated to attend. 

Brienne was always professional, always demure. Even with Cersei’s persistent torrent of vile and cutting words. She smiled when she was supposed to, laughed at Tyrion’s ribald humor, pandered to Tywin when needed, and played the dutiful wife.

Until they got home. 

The closed door of her bedroom was a cold, dead space. Jaime had spent 6 months trying to draw her out. A woman like Brienne would not respond to gifts and stupid declarations of a growing respect that Jaime knew would coalesce into a fondness in him. He wouldn't win her with words, or insistances of possibilities.

No, Jaime thought as he looked at her shut door. Brienne was only interested in rightness, honor and duty. Their marriage was proof of that. 

It was Winter’s Mass in four days and they were due to be at Casterly for Eve and day of celebrations. Jaime had been dreading it; not for himself. He knew that his family was insane and had long ago learned to survive an extended visit in the Lion’s Den. 

Cersei had shown enough of her true colors to force a once thought life of rendezvous and purloined passions, into a resounding and steady abayance of both attraction and intimacy.

Some things are just for the better, at least in the long run.

Jaime sighed, twirling the gift on the never used breakfast table. It had been a bard decision, but the only one in the end. 

He waited. Like a zookeeper attempting to befriend a particularly skittish zebra. He sighed again as her door opened. Typically, upon seeing him anywhere in the apartment, Brienne would find a reason to either return to her suite of rooms, or run for the front door as like Drogon himself were on her ass. 

This time, when she emerged, in all her giant glory, Jaime held up a hand and spoke. “Please.” he said. “I wanted to give you your Winter’s Mass gift. “ 

She shook her head, but something of the child in every person when faced with the prospect of a gift, rooted her to the spot. “I didn’t--we didn’t agree on--” she stammered. Jaime got the point, she didn’t get him anything. Not that there was anything he truly wanted. Well, anything she was willing to give him. 

“It’s fine, Brienne.” he said with a save of the hand. “I don't expect you to.” He gripped the thin present in his hand and held it out to her. “It’s not that kind of gift.”

She shuffled closer, as if he would reach out and bite her at any moment. Or, grab and accost her. He grinned at her, the same grin he used when driving from Casterly on their weekly torture sessions. She, in turn, would often scowl deeper and fall asleep on the long drive. Lately, he’s had to keep himself from staring at her and not the road in front of them. 

Her large hand met with the brightly wrapped package, she tugged it and he tugged back. “Have you been naughty, or nice, Brienne?” he japed as she tugged the package free.

“I’m sure the Mother will not be leaving me the same lumps of coal she has left for you for time out of mind.” A small smile tugged at her lips. She had spent far too much time with him and her wit had been the better for it. “It's awfully thin,” she said, giving the gift a timid shake. 

“Ah, but it's what the well-heeled socialite will be wearing this season. “ He drawled. She held the present in her hand, “Open it.” he said. 

She scowled again, deeper than the typical aperture, but not as sour as those she reserved for his oft thrown truths. “What is it?” she asked as if the thing was not in her hands ready to be torn open by her own will. 

“Open it,” he said again. Brienne considered the gift in her hands, then gave him a look of honest curiosity “Please.”

She sat at the table and Jaime realized he could count on one hand the number of times they had sat together at their breakfast table. He sighed again, hoping against hope this was the right thing to do. He would miss her terribly, though she had every right to run and never look back. 

She held the papers in hand; a look of abject confusion replaced the scowl. “What is this?” she asked. 

“Freedom,” he answered, but the words tasted like ashes in his mouth. “It's the only thing I could think to give you.”

Her face, red and angry. “But, that’s not part of the contract!” she wielded the signed divorce papers in her hand and waved them in his face. “The terms were--”

He held up his hand to stop her. “The terms are irrelevant. If you look closer everything agreed upon is there. And then some.” Jaime stood and began to wrangle the coffeemaker into life. 

“But why?” she asked. Her voice held a note of something that made Jaime’s heart squeeze, and in that moment he understood the last part of the old tale about a heart growing within the Grinch’s chest. 

He turned from his task and caught his wife of six months clutching the papers and squeezing her eyes shut. “You’re miserable, here. With me.” he said.

“I’m not.” she insisted., To which, Jaime laughed. 

“Brienne, this is the longest conversation the two of us have ever had. And, I am counting that first exchange on Tarth when we sat and hammered out our agreement.”

Brienne stood then. “Is this what you want?” she asked, she’d placed the papers on the table in front of her and began scratching the mark on her wrist.

“The gift is for you.” he said over his shoulder as the coffee press came to life. 

She stood. “This isn't--” she said, then shook her blonde head. “This isn't right.”

He studied her face as he turned from the counter. Why?” he asked, arms folded. “Because of some mark that tells us we were destined for each other? I hardly see how that makes a difference when two people cannot even speak to one another.”

“We’re speaking now,” she said. 

Jaime slid back into the seat at the table. The coffeemaker whirred and spurted into life. “We are.” he said. “But is it enough?”

She fingered the pile of papers. There was enough money in the settlement to get Tarth rebooted and updated into the new millennium. There was also enough for her to start a new life. Away.

“Why?” she asked, her voice that of a little girl who awoke to find nothing under the tree. “I don't understand.”

The gift is for you, Brienne.” he said, finally letting go of all artifice. “I am trying to follow the old adage here, about letting things go and coming back.”

His wife’s face twisted into a red, blotchy visage. “Don’t you mock me.” she hissed. “You haven't been in this marriage, either.”

Jaime nodded. “I’ve been pretending.” he said finally. “I’ve been allowing this,” he waved between them, “to slide into obscurity.”

It was Brienne’s turn to nod. “I figured you only wanted to marry, to keep seeing--”

“I have not touched her since we stood in the sept, Brienne.” he replied, angrier than intended. “I may be a lot of things, but I do have some honor.” he spat.

Brienne turned away, suddenly interested in the sounds of the coffeemaker. “I had assumed.” she said. 

“You assumed wrong.”

“I’ve been pretending, too.” she said, her head bowed. “I’ve tried to give you the space I thought you wanted. I didn't want to be the third wheel in this.” she sighed. “I thought I was doing the right thing. Or at least, what was right in this…”

“Maybe it's time for both of us to stop pretending,” he said with all the hope in his heart. 

She turned to him again. Her fingers thrumming on the pile of paperwork. “Where does this leave us?”

Jaime leaned back in his chair. “There’s an us?” 

She turned those magnificent murder lamps on him, then. “We’re married,” she said. “We share a mark.”

“This can be whatever we make of it, Brienne. “ he said.

“We’ve made a mess of this so far.” 

“Has that made you any happier?” he asked. “Do you really want to be here?” He passed her a pen from his pocket. “It's fine, Brienne. We gave it a shot.”

“I don’t want--” She shook her head, tears brimming along the cerulean expanse of her eyes. “I didn't think--”

Jaime took a chance, he placed his hand on hers. “What do you want?” he asked. “Tell me I haven't been in this alone. Tell me that we can--” `he stopped, for then, the impossible happened. 

She squeezed his hand, and Jaime was certain, in that small gesture, as their marks aligned to each other and their hands came together, he saw. 

A future. 

She took the papers in her other hand and smiled at him. “You aren't the monster I had thought you to be. Those months ago.”

Jaime squeezed her hand back. “Brienne, are you flirting with me?” he smiled. 

Her dour-faced morphed into one Jaime had someday hoped to see; a visage of mild annoyance with something under it, something...hopeful. “You have a high opinion of yourself, Jaime.” 

He preened in his seat. “Are you saying I’m pretty?” 

Brienne scoffed, but it sounded like each one of the seven heavens to him. “I’m saying, you believe yourself to be pretty.”

“I am pretty, Brienne.” he smiled, realizing their hands were still together and feeling his heart race like a teenager at prom. She scoffed again but kept her hand in his. “We’re a mess,” she said. 

“We are.” he agreed. 

She gave him an honest smile, and Jaime hoped, this was one gift that would be returned.


End file.
